


your troubles will be out of sight

by brahe



Series: brahe's 2017 advent bingo [17]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Backstory, First Dates, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Heart-to-Heart, Holiday Vacation, M/M, Meet the Family, ac2017, adventchallenge, home for the holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-17 09:39:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13074180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brahe/pseuds/brahe
Summary: Leonard knows Jim doesn't have holiday plans; he's just got to figure out how to ask his roommate and best friend to come home with him for the break.





	your troubles will be out of sight

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the prompt "scrooge" and I was struggling with it for a while until this just kinda spilled all over the page. No beta as usual, so please excuse any errors.  
> Title from have yourself a merry little christmas, which, ironically, is also the title of the other star trek fic fill I did for this challenge

 

 

Leonard comes out of his last final feeling like a dead man walking. He drags himself back to his dorm, drops his stuff by the door, and collapses into bed. He sleeps for two hours, maybe more - he doesn't get up until Jim gets back from his last final.

Jim drops onto his own bed with a dramatic sigh, body splayed out, staring at the ceiling. The only sounds in the room for a while are their breaths, deep and slow, as they exhale the stress of the week. 

"Got any plans for the break?" Leonard asks. It's the third time he's asked, and he's hoping this'll be the first time he gets a straight answer. Jim as dodged the question all month, and Leonard's starting to put those pieces together with the lack of lights, decorations, or any mention of the holiday season.

Jim hums. "Sleep," he says, and Leonard agrees. Still, not the answer he's looking for. Leonard's tried to avoid asking outright, but he's starting to learn that the direct approach is sometimes the better way to go with one Jim Kirk.

Leonard rolls over, props his head up on his hand and looks at Jim, eyebrows furrowed.

"Jim," he says, and Jim sighs.

"Look," Jim interrupts, "I'd rather not."

"Come on, Jim."

Jim rolls his head to the side, meets Leonard's gaze. "I'm just tryna understand."

"I know," Jim says, lets out a breath. He rubs at his forehead. "It's just - a long story, and it's not really a happy one, either."

Leonard looks back at the ceiling. For all the Jim talks, he sure never says a lot about himself. Leonard noticed that within the first few weeks of knowing the kid. He's easy as hell to talk to, and Leonard found himself biting his tongue against spilling his life story to him on several occasions. Jim still knows way more about him than he knows about Jim; Leonard knows about his dad and his mom and his step-dad, but most he knows is theory, put together from off-hand comments about Remembrance Day, unanswered comm calls he gets once a month, the way he hides away when he's drunk off his ass.

"I've got time," Leonard shrugs.

"Don't you have a shuttle to catch?"

"Not for two days," Leonard tells him. Which is true, because he'd been planning this ambush for about a week now, and if it's going the way he hopes, the extra bed his ma made up will see some use.

Jim's sigh this time is long and deep, as if he's trying to exhale the bad things he's remembering, and Leonard gets it, really, he does, but he's not giving up when he's this close to answers.

"Holidays were never...great. A lot of things were never great, you know, my childhood left a lot to be desired. My birthday was off the table, and Christmas after Sam left just...never happened. Before that, and Frank, we did the best we could. It was never anything extravagant or whatever, but me and Sam would try to get each other something and we'd look at the lights and make hot chocolate and sit in front of the fireplace together for hours.

"The first year after everything, I tried to do it how we used to, but..." 

"But you can't go back," Leonard nods. He understands, at a certain level, the way loss can change the good things in your life, rip open a hole and leave it gaping. But he also knows that love, family is the only thing that can fix that hole, and Jim Kirk has none.

Leonard turns to look at Jim, who's blinking hard at the ceiling. "Come home with me," he says, and it's not how he had wanted to say it, but he'd been meaning to ask for weeks now. "Come back to Georgia with me for the break."

Jim's shaking his head before Leonard even finishes. "I can't, Bones," he says. "I just - I can't."

"You can."

"I'd get in the way. None of your family knows who I am, I'd just be this sad stranger who's never decorated a Christmas tree and can't drink hot chocolate without getting sad."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Leonard raises an eyebrow. "Pretty much everyone in my family knows who you are." He pauses, debates for half a second about whether or not he wants to admit this, but this is Jim and if he's going to get anywhere with him, it's going to be with honesty. "And not for the reason you're thinking. Ma's been asking when I'm going to bring home that blonde boy I've been talkin' so much about. Says, 'you'd better not be askin' that nice young man on a date till I've warned him about you.'"

It's quiet after that, and Jim thinks about everyone Bones has just told him.

"Isn't that kinda like a date?" he says eventually, because it's the easiest thing to say. "Inviting me home with you for the holiday." 

Leonard shrugs, and maybe he's blushing, he won't say. "If you wanted it to be." 

"If I say yes," Jim starts, and when Leonard looks over, their eyes meet. " _If_  I say yes, you have to promise me that you're willing to deal with this. I haven't celebrated Christmas since I was eight years old, Bones. I don't wanna ruin it for anyone else."

"I will," Leonard says. "I do. And you won't. Joanna's gonna be so thrilled to meet you. Ma, too."

"Bones..."

Leonard's sigh ends in a laugh. "Yeah, I know. We'll get through it, though. Together."

"Together," Jim repeats, and he smiles at the ceiling. "I like the sound of that." 


End file.
